After the Bucks\u2019 losing streak reached five games last night and dropped them to two games below .500 through 18 games, good news was in short supply around the team\u2026 until now. Giannis Antetokounmpo, who sustained a right groin strain last Monday in Cleveland, may be returning in the next day or two. Ahead of tomorrow night\u2019s NBA Cup group stage showdown in Miami with the 12-6\u2014and now pretty healthy\u2014Heat, Giannis is listed as questionable with the strain.<\/p>\n
An MRI one week ago revealed the strain was minor, as confirmed by Doc Rivers on friend of the site Gale Klappa\u2019s Courtside podcast. Doc said one to two weeks, but hedged by saying Giannis would be out \u201cprobably a couple weeks.\u201d Bucks fans know very well about Giannis\u2019 superhuman recovery time and his ability to play elite ball through nagging injuries, so it\u2019s not a shocker he\u2019s back on the lower end of that timespan, having missed the last three.<\/p>\n
Conservatively, I and others were anticipating him to be back on Monday, with an outside shot of this weekend. But tomorrow night\u2014if he indeed plays\u2014was not something I expected. He\u2019ll likely test it out in pregame and go through a typical warmup before any determination. He might be on a minutes restriction too. Before last night\u2019s loss to Portland, he did go through some sort of warmup routine, as relayed by Lisa Byington on the broadcast. So that pointed to things going in a positive direction, and is in line with what Doc said a week ago.<\/p>\n
Kevin Porter Jr. should also be nearing a return after undergoing right meniscus surgery at the beginning of the month. Doc told reporters last night that he thought KPJ was also close before last night\u2019s game, and he too went through some warmups alongside Giannis. For what it\u2019s worth, Darvin Ham said on Gale\u2019s pod back on November 13th\u201412 days ago\u2014that Porter was about two weeks away. Though he\u2019s listed as out tomorrow, don\u2019t rule out the possibility of seeing Scoot in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Maybe the undefeated group stage dream\/Ham NBA Cup domination isn\u2019t a lost cause?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Bucks\u2019 losing streak reached five games last night and dropped them to two games below .500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,1845,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-435612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-bucks-injury-report","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115613651800266747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}